Readers Report
Brooklyn to me walking down 13th Ave., eating hot dogs or falafel both thick with sauerkraut. Going skating every Friday night when I was in high school and afterwards all of us eating sundaes at Jahn's. Walking to school! Graduating from FDR, a school next to a cemetery. Riding on buses and singing, singing everywhere we went. Playing punchball on 57th Street. Every year going to camp in Staten Island and riding the ferry to get there. If anyone who reads this graduated from FDR in '69 please e-mail me. I haven't been in touch with anyone since then.
30 May 1999
Continued from Vicky Mahoney's earlier report . . .
I love your "My Brooklyn" and return to it whenever I need a soaking in my childhood and young adult life in that special place. When I was still in California, two months ago, I had several responses to my (earlier) entry. I do not have my previous e-mail address book, and so have lost touch with those ex-Brooklynites I was just getting to know through this medium. Irwin Hale, are you still out there? How about the writer of his neighborhood games—I was very interested in the manuscript. Both of these guys hail from my old neighborhood of East New York. Now I have moved 1000 miles, to Deming, New Mexico and am still unpacking after two months here, but certainly would not mind some e-mail from those folks. This small town, Deming, in some weird way reminds me of Brooklyn. No, I'm not crazy. It doesn't look like Brooklyn at all, the speech patterns are completely different, the foods featured are chiles and tortillas instead of lox and cream cheese. The ethnic backgrounds of folks here are Hispanic or those Scots-Irish-English from the dustbowl areas for the most part. BUT, there is that same camaraderie, that sense of one big family/community that unites people and makes them pleasant to each other. I find that means so much in this over-large world. Hail to thee, Brooklyns of all forms.
30 May 1999
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